


purgatory

by papyrocrat



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, depressive thought patterns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:43:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee-centric AU of S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	purgatory

He cups Dee’s jaw in his hands. His hands stay cold, and their kiss is sour in his mouth. He endures for a moment, then pulls back to see Dee’s smile. “Let’s go home,” she says, sweet and proud.  
   
 _Home_ , he thinks disdainfully, and gives a brittle laugh. She lights up at having made him smile.  
   
They settle into the raptor to shoot out of the sunlight. He can tell she’s biting her tongue. “Hung over,” he explains, “you were right.”  
   
She smiles and strokes his arm fondly. He turns away and stares moodily out the window.  
   
He can’t live up to this.  
   
 

 

*

   
   
“I’m transferring you back to Galactica.”  
   
He could dodge, he supposes, but that would mean coming out and saying _it’s over_.  
   
“I don’t,” she shakes her head. “What did I do wrong?”  
   
“Nothing. In fact, you’re being promoted. Can’t leave my father and Tigh unsupervised. Gods know what they’ll get up to.”  
   
“Lee,” she starts, and thinks better of it.  
   
“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”  
   
He lights up and stares the door down until he nods off on the couch. There’s never a knock.  
   
   
 

*

   
   
Now that his dates with Dee have stopped, the only stranger who stops by his quarters is his XO, bearing paperwork and usually, as tonight, frustrating updates on his shrinking crew.  
   
Shaw manages to look stoically impatient as he leans over her, and then _smirks_ as he slams her against the wall.  
   
He runs a hand up her jaw; yanks her hair until she has to bare her neck. She’s maddeningly calm about the whole thing, until he flicks his tongue over the tiny constellation of pinpricks he’s pretended not to notice.  
   
She shudders at _that_.  
   
He lets her pull him in by his belt and unzip their fatigues before yanking her arms over her head and pinning her to the wall. He slides his other hand down her neck, then her chest, and twists a nipple through her tanks until she hisses in pain.  
   
She wriggles out of her pants and braces a foot against the wall. _This is a giant frak-up_ , he thinks as he presses into her.  
   
They both come in minutes.

 

 

*

   
   
Viper pilots all smoke – thick, overvalued, phallic cigars, spoils of the petty battle to the top gun spot. About blowing smoke out, hiding behind a haze of strut, rather than sucking it in to scrape down your throat. He likes cigars as much as any of them.  
   
But he doesn’t quite know when he became a smoker, though he undoubtedly has, an embarrassing but cherished private ritual. He stretches the tobacco in Fisk’s stash of cigars as long as possible into light, clumsily-rolled cigarettes, wrapping up his habit in a waste of precious air and paper.  
   
He doesn’t even like it, but he doesn’t much care.  
   
   
 

*

   
   
She drops the box of cigars on his couch. _Wouldn’t want another black market sellout_ , he hears them both think.  
   
They frak on the floor, hard and fast, Kendra on all fours with her tanks shoved up around her shoulders.  
   
They never kiss and they never speak.  
   
   
 

*

   
   
   
Not even a year under his belt and he loses an XO in a training accident. Of all things.  
   
He quietly transfers the ensign involved to Galactica. He says all the right things at the service and manages not to heave until he gets back to his quarters.  
   
Kara, being Kara, picks that afternoon to call and beg for Sam. “Frak you,” he snaps, and slams down the receiver.  
   
 

*

   
   
It was only a matter of time, he’d known, but the sonic boom makes him jump.  
   
“We have to leave,” he urges over the intercom.  
   
“We have people down there!” his father argues.  
   
 “There’s nothing we can do for them now.”  
   
His father makes some noise or other about standing and fighting.  
   
He stifles a cough, but lets himself sneer. “Is this how you want to go out? Losing a pissing match over this godsforsaken rock?”  
   
There’s silence. The old man’s thoughts come through loud and clear.  
   
“There’s no point in making a show. That’s what _she’d_ have said, and you know it.”  
   
It hadn’t always been, but that afternoon in the brig was a lifetime ago, so Lee keeps the truth to himself.  
   
“We’re coming back.”  
   
He clenches his jaw. “Sir.”  
   
They jump.  
   
 

*

   
   
And jump, and jump, and jump, for months. Lee drinks and he smokes and he doesn’t protest when Dee replaces his XO.  
   
 

*

   
   
His father is the universe’s stubbornest romantic. The senior staff of both ships meets every day to bicker about a hypothetical, futile rescue mission. Lee mostly leans against the wall and clicks a pen.  
   
Until the day some jackass suggests they start by sending down the… _asset_.  
   
He scoffs before thinking. They all stare. “You’re going to hinge this plan on some skin job?”  
   
“Are you saying we shouldn’t trust her because she’s a Cylon?”  
   
That strikes him as a perfectly reasonable line of thought, but then, Agathon is hardly reasonable about his wife. Or at all. “I’m saying, why not use it to get her down there? They must have one of their…stations down there.”  
   
“Hubs,” Sharon corrects, then bites her lip.  
   
He smirks. “High time we used their tech against them, don’t you think?”  
   
 “You’re saying we should kill her?”  
   
“She’ll get over it.” His scalp crawls and his fingers itch for a cigarette and he just wants to _leave_ , rather than rehash this stale debate. He curses himself for getting involved.  
   
“That’s asking an awful lot.”  
   
Karl’s obnoxious disapproval goads him on. “Oh. So she’s a Colonial officer candidate as long as she’s safe in her _cage?_ ” Sharon flinches. He throws it all at his father. “Do you want to save them, or do you just wanna die?”  
   
He wonders for a split second if he’s gone too far, but his father turns his mouth downward and pauses. “Thank you for your input, commander.”  
   
 _I’m very disappointed, Lee,_ he almost hears, and vaguely remembers a time that had power over him. Now he presses on. “That’s not even touching with the way they’ll know the second you break atmo.”  
   
Stating the obvious amps up the room’s hostile buzz. “You, or us?”  
   
He shrugs. “Does it matter?” It really doesn’t, but he goes on. “Stagger entry, or something.”  
   
The disappointed frown vanishes.  
   
He stares at the door.  
   
 

*

   
   
He looks over his CIC and imagines the rousing speech his father probably forced on Galactica twelve hours before.  
   
Whatever it was, it’s not so much his style. He flips the intercom on and gives the first order, with an understated sting.  
   
“You all know what to do.” Uninspired, perhaps, but the best he can offer to the remnants of Cain’s crew.  
   
And they do it, technically and brilliantly, until the ship itself gives out. He thanks them all, praises their skill and their courage, and tells them to turn tail and run.  
   
He crowds two bridge bunnies and Dee onto his last raptor. They all avoid each other’s eyes as they catch their breath.  
   
“Lee.”  
   
Dee nudges him.  
   
“Lee.”  
   
He shakes himself into the present and leans into her.  
   
“Are you okay?”  
   
They watch the Pegasus shine itself into oblivion.  
   
“Sure.”  
   
He feels nothing.


End file.
